The Storyteller and the Detective
by FogandSpyglass
Summary: WIP that will eventually become slash. Set post-Fall. Several nods to the Canon. Brookstrade. SAVE UNDERSHAW -Very worthy cause.
1. Exposition

The Story Teller and the Detective. Prologue

After Sherlock's death, things had gone from bad to worse for Gregory Lestrade. He'd been suspended for a week, pending a full investigation, and because he'd been home had met Bryan.

Bryan was ten years younger than him, half a foot taller, easily stronger, and a Sports Science Teacher. He was also sleeping with Mrs. Lestrade.

When he finally got back to work, after a long investigation, he found himself reaching for the phone. Only when he scrolled through his contacts to Sherlock did he see the note in the 'company' field. DEAD

He didn't like the word deceased, as callous as it might sound, dead was a much better word. It didn't tone down the finality of it. You knew when someone was dead that you wouldn't be seeing them again.

It was strange. Ever since Sherlock had jumped, he'd been trying to work out exactly what had been fake. It didn't make sense. Fake crimes? Of course, they could be. Fake criminals? How on earth would you make someone else take the wrap for what you'd done? And they'd have known if large sums of money had been transferred to any of the criminals, or from any of Sherlock's accounts. The amazing clues could be faked, but to plant them without alerting the SOCOs would be no mean feat. Sherlock Holmes clearly had been a genius. Maybe not in the way they'd thought but he must have been at some point. And he couldn't have faked all the cases he'd helped on for the several years they'd known each other.

He glanced down at his case file again. Some junior busybody had attempted to pin conspiracy to perjury on Richard Brook. He made a note at the bottom of the page that an enquiry had already been launched and had closed. Richard Brook was coerced in so many ways that they'd never get a conviction.

He felt sorry for the man though, looking at the two photos. One was a haughty mastermind stood in front of the custody desk, having his mugshot taken. The other was a smiling man with two children sat on the ground as he read: a publicity shot from 'the Storyteller'. And wasn't that just like Sherlock. To choose the Storyteller to tell his story.

And now, Rich Brook was the subject of a smear campaign. People were spray painting everywhere: I believe in Sherlock, Rich Brook = liar, Moriarty was real. It was worse online, with plenty of people actively posting threats to his website.

He realised he'd been staring at the file, completely spaced out. He needed another caffeine boost.

Sticking his head out of his office, he shouted to Youghal, who looked like he was on the coffee run for the organised Crime lot.

"Yougs? Get us a latte with an extra shot of expresso"

"Essssspresso you mean?" Youghal had a shit-eating grin on his face. Rightly so, too.

"No, I mean I want it express, double time." He ducked back in for a moment, then stuck his head out as Youghal turned to go. "and with the extra coffee shot."

He got a middle finger for his troubles. Bradstreet whistled at Youghal: "public order offence that." Got one for himself.

Sitting back down at his desk, a phone number caught his eye. Richard Brook: Personal Mobile Telephone.


	2. Introduction

He should never have taken it. He didn't need it, Richard Brook was no longer his division, but he had copied it down anyway, sat there at home with a piece of paper in front of him and his phone in his hand. She hadn't noticed anything, but why would she, she was glowing like she'd just had the best sex of her life. Bitterly he thought, "she probably has" but Bryan wasn't married to her, and that had to mean something.

He'd left the piece of paper on the sofa when he'd followed her upstairs. They'd gone to bed, and he'd rolled over, stroked patterns on her skin, tried to have a nice conversation, dropped hints...It hadn't worked, she seemed irritable. So he'd tried to hug her, curled up against her back, spooning like they used to. She was having none of it. She'd pushed him away. Told him she didn't appreciate him pressuring her, that love wasn't the same as sex. Told him that physical intimacy wasn't the same as emotional closeness. Fool that he was, he'd believed her and slept on his side of the bed.

Two weeks later he'd managed to get a grease stain on one of the sofa cushions. It took him a full hour to take the cover off, wash it and put it back on, and at the end of it, he sat back down on the cushion to watch something. It was then he realised he'd only gone and dropped the remote down the side of the cushion, so he reached down the side, cheese on toast placed carefully on the coffee table to prevent another disaster.

He'd found fifty-eight pence in small coins, mostly five pence pieces. He found a small key, the kind that unlocks super secret diaries, probably belonging to one of their nieces or one of the neighbours' kids, found a voucher for a free manicure when he [or more likely his wife] spent 40 quid on beauty products 'This Autumn'. 'This Autumn', it turned out, was 2009. He found a loyalty card that was one meal away from a free pudding, a lego man's head, a huge amount of crumbs, almost all of which were probably his fault, a piece of paper with a number on it, and finally the remote. To be fair, he'd found the remote before most of the fifty-eight pence, but had decided while he was there to clean the crevice next to the sofa arm.

It was only half an hour later, when he'd watched a rerun of a rerun of a rerun of QI that he'd realised who the number belonged to. He'd quickly entered it into his phone and thrown the paper away. Along with the voucher, the lego head and the crumbs. He kept the loyalty card of course.

* * *

><p>The Coffee had run out again. He was betting Gregson with his smug grin and his shiny, impractical shoes had been the one to empty it. He texted Bradstreet his lamentations, planning to have a healthy bitch about their mutual colleague. About four minutes later he received a reply.<p>

It wasn't from Bradstreet.

He saw his error immediately, sitting demurely in his contact list between Inspector Samantha Brown and Inspector Dave Bradstreet was the name 'Richard Brook'. Quickly, he rattled off a reply, an apology. Hopefully he'd be able to pass it off as a wrong number and delete that contact from his phone and the matter would be at an end. No such luck for him. Another reply. A joke.

He couldn't help it, he replied, his coffee forgotten. If anyone noticed him texting under the table while they pow-wowed about their latest mugging-turned-stabbing-turned-hit-and-run, they didn't mention it. Good thing too. He didn't know how he'd explain away being in close contact with someone they'd arrested and who had been in league with the fraud that had got him suspended.

But Rich seemed to understand, as he should, that Sherlock wasn't a fake genius, just a fake detective. And that was why he kept texting him. And probably why he kept getting replies back.


	3. Rising Action

It was easy to blur and then cross the line between jokes and flirting. He didn't mean to the first time, just made an accidental double entendre. But when Rich responded with a simple, "aha. was that because your truncheon was a bit too big?" it was all he could do not to grin while in a press conference.

As soon as they left, tabloids taking a few photos of the back of his head as he escorted the victim and his family from the room, he rattled off a reply. "Unfortunately, that's always been my problem. As an experienced actor, I'm sure you've encountered your fair share of oversized weapons." As they drove back to NSY, he kept checking his phone, even though it hadn't beeped yet. In fact, he didn't' get a reply until he went home and came out at Bank, quickly walking along to Mansion House, and got a burst of signal. His phone beeped twice, a message from his wife was also sat in the inbox. He checked it second.

Without knowing it, Greg Lestrade had made a friend in Rich Brook.

* * *

><p>Saturday evening came and so did John Watson. It was an informal sort of arrangement. Every now and again they'd meet on Saturday. So far that had been every other Saturday since the funeral. It had never bothered Greg before; after all, it gave him a reason to leave the house. He'd realised within a few weeks that he was probably facilitating his wife's affair, but he also didn't want to realise it, so he pretended that Bryan, being a Sports Science teacher, must know a lot about physiotherapy, in fact, he was probably just a masseuse. The missus had a high stress, high powered job, she needed help relaxing most likely.<p>

And wasn't it nice that while she relaxed, he did the same, popping to the local [well, semi-local, it was fifteen minutes on the tube], and having a well earned pint or two with a friend.

Today was different though. Because now he felt guilty.

John was talking about Sherlock again, understandably too, the man had been the source of his reintegration into civilian[okay, debatably civilian] life. The doctor didn't always sit there and lament their friend's death, in fact most of the time they didn't even mention Sherlock, even though without him they'd never have met.

Just as they were shaking their heads, smiling into their respective pints about a case in which Sherlock had managed to work out exactly the time the Abernetty family had been murdered, not the reason they were smiling, very brutally, also not the reason, his phone rang. The reason they were smiling was because he'd worked it out by noticing how far the mint had sunk into a cheesecake in summer!

Mid-laugh, he checked the text and his grin settled into a small chuckle and a smile. He set his pint down and both thumbs flew over the keys. He pressed send and turned back to find Dr. John Watson giving him a particularly curious look combined with a smirk. Instantly he remembered _Rich Brook_. The smile froze on his face and his blood ran cold.

"You're a married man, Detective Inspector." Thank God.

"Just a joke with a friend, Doctor." Greg realised that actually, it was. "And anyway, _he_ started it." He forced the grin to stay in place, and thankfully John shook his head and dropped it.

"Policemen, eh...You're worse than squaddies."

It was his ace in the hole. They all _said_ that being gay was fine. And it was. But as a married man, he could close off any suspicions by mentioning the _man_ he was texting dirty jokes to was just that. Another man. It was sort of the nature of being a bisexual, you were totally invisible. People never noticed that you were checking out the waiter's arse, because why would you be when you're sat opposite your wife, except to joke? And if someone spots you in a gay bar with a wedding ring, well, you're either in a civil partnership, wearing it to stay in the closet at work, or the straight friend they've brought along. And of course, once Dave started getting eyes from the younger men, which he always did, if one of their friends started talking to him, they'd catch the way he looked at some of the people in the club, and they'd think he was gay.

It had caused a lot of problems actually. Once, he'd been propositioned, which made it sound much more elegant than a hand on his arse and a whisper in his ear, and had declined, showing the ring. He'd been met with disbelief at first. Then, he'd been told that he just needed to be true to himself, and that they'd seen him looking at their arse. He couldn't deny that, but he wasn't a heavily closeted gay. He knew what he liked, and women were definitely on that list. Men often went onto it too.

In fact, he had realised that at the moment he was thinking about men a lot more than usual. And he was a detective, he wasn't stupid enough to think it was unconnected to a good looking actor flirting with him.


End file.
